1963 ford thunderbird sports roadster colors

He told me he had been a Ford executive, and that his wife wanted a Thunderbird painted a special color.” So I waited all day for this man, and it was probably six o'clock that night that he finally came home. But through the window of a detached garage he could see the Thunderbird, “with about three-quarters of an inch of dust on top of it. “So I said to Susan” - the couple had married in 1970 - 'I'll be right back.' Tom arrived at the specified address to find no one at home. In fact, Tom was unemployed in 1974, when he spotted a newspaper ad for a '56 T-Bird in nearby Freehold. And I kept looking, but didn't have much money to spend.” And then there were three or four other Thunderbirds that I fixed up and sold. I put in a 4.88 rear, and there wasn't a Corvette around that could beat it. “I had to cut a horseshoe in the seat for the shifter. “I took the engine out, cut the firewall out, and put in a 375-cubic-inch Chevy fuelie set back 10 inches,” he explained. Tom was just 14 when he bought his first Thunderbird, a decade-old '56, for $600. His gentle, easy laugh brightens his recollections of those days.

“I was just a kid,” he recalled, “and they were in their 30s.” At one time Tom held the track record in B/Gas Dragster. Growing up in the 1960s, near the fabled Raceway Park in Old Bridge Township, New Jersey, Tom Mirro challenged - and occasionally bettered - the legends of the era: Tommy Ivo, Don Prudhomme, and Don Garlits among them. And, yes, we did say the car has been honored for its exceptionally accurate restoration. It is the only Thunderbird we've ever seen in this color it is likely the only one in the world. Thunderbirds for 1956 were offered in nine vivid hues, but the deep, rich, glowing-ember red of the Mirro car wasn't one of them. The quality of the restoration is superb in fact, the Mirro's Thunderbird was one of just 18 vehicles nominated for the 2021 AACA Zenith Award, which honors the best and most accurate restoration among the Club's 60,000 members.īut there's something else particularly striking about the Mirro's car, and it's the color. Contributing to its unique charm is its long list of luxury options - some quite rare, like the yellow-lens fog lamps integrated into the front bumper guards. In more than 30 years of deep Thunderbird immersion, we've never seen another quite like it. Amid even the finest flock of 1955-57 two-seaters, Tom and Susan Mirro's '56 Thunderbird gracefully soars above.

1963 ford thunderbird sports roadster colors